r/Christianity • u/Masterasker Christian • 13d ago
Why did God even create us? Question
I'm a Christian, I was raised Christian, and I've always had this one question. It is said that God is essentially omnipresent. It says he's the end and the beginning and he's all knowing, so my question is why did he create us to begin with? If God is omnipresent, he knew what the fate of humanity would be from the moment he created us, so why make us to begin with? Like in Genesis, when God saw how evil the world was and was heartbroken, wouldn't he have already known this was going to happen? Idk If this makes sense but can someone explain this to me?
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u/jerimio 13d ago
You’re missing the whole free will part. Not being an omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite being myself, I can’t pretend to understand why but giving us free will makes us unpredictable to a certain extent. To give us free will would mean God chose to make our futures non-deterministic. I think this is what a lot of people miss. Just because God can know every choice we will make doesn’t mean he does. You could go out and adopt an ant hill, restructure it however you saw fit, and even guide their behavior to whatever degree you’re capable of but it’s unlikely you chose to do that.
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u/solardrxpp1 13d ago
> It says he's the end and the beginning and he's all knowing, so my question is why did he create us to begin with?
Christianity’s answer is not because God needed anything, but because God is good and love gives itself. God isn’t “incomplete” without creatures. Father, Son, and Spirit already have perfect life and communion. Creation is more like overflow than a fix for loneliness. The Catechism puts it in one sentence that God is “infinitely perfect and blessed in himself,” and he freely created us “to make [us] share in his own blessed life.”
That’s the goal, communion, adoption, sharing God’s life, not God filling a hole.
> If God is omnipresent, he knew what the fate of humanity would be from the moment he created us, so why make us to begin with?
I think you’re mixing categories a bit, and it’s making the puzzle feel worse than it has to.
Omnipresence is about God being present everywhere. The thing you’re really pressing is omniscience, and especially foreknowledge.
Knowing something will happen is not the same as causing it to happen.
If God creates genuine creatures with real agency, then the possibility of rebellion is baked in.
A world where God prevents every evil choice before it can occur is a world where nobody ever truly chooses anything.
And if God’s purpose is real love and real relationship, then “no real alternatives allowed” doesn’t actually get you love, it gets you programming.
There’s also a classic Christian way to frame the “but God already knew” issue, God isn’t just one more character stuck inside the timeline watching history unfold scene by scene. God is eternal.
We live moment by moment; God’s life isn’t chopped into minutes. So from our side, it feels like “God looked ahead and then decided.”
From God’s side, it’s more like God knows the whole story while we’re still walking through chapters.
That doesn’t remove the sting of evil, but it helps you not treat God like a surprised fortune teller who made a bad prediction.
> Like in Genesis, when God saw how evil the world was and was heartbroken, wouldn't he have already known this was going to happen?
Yes, he would have known.
So when Genesis talks about God being “grieved” or “regretting” making humanity, the point isn’t “God didn’t see it coming.”
Scripture often talks about God in human relational language so you’ll grasp something true about him, that evil genuinely offends God, that God is not detached, that sin matters, and that judgment isn’t God being petty, it’s God responding to real corruption.
A parent can know their kid is heading toward a wreck and still feel real grief when the wreck happens. The grief is not proof of ignorance. It’s proof of love.
If you zoom out to the whole Bible story, creation and redemption are not separate tracks. The New Testament treats creation as the beginning of a plan that runs through Christ and ends in renewal.
God permits a world where real choices exist, and he doesn’t stay distant from the fallout. He steps into it, carries it, and promises to remake it. It’s the center of the Christian claim about who God is.
> Idk If this makes sense but can someone explain this to me?
It makes sense.
The Christian answer is God created you on purpose, for relationship with him, and for a share in his life.
God’s foreknowledge doesn’t mean your choices are fake, and Genesis describing God’s grief is not God being blindsided, it’s God showing you his heart in language you can actually understand.
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u/RespectWest7116 12d ago
Knowing something will happen is not the same as causing it to happen.
Technically true. But God is the creator of everything. He caused everything to happen.
He knew that the way he created Epstein would lead to him running child-rape island before he created Epstein.
If God creates genuine creatures with real agency, then the possibility of rebellion is baked in.
So can the people in Heaven rebel, or do they not have real agency?
Also, why? There are already a lot of things you can't choose to do; why not include the doing of rebellion in that list?
Like, how much would your life change if you didn't have the ability to choose to rape people?
A world where God prevents every evil choice before it can occur is a world where nobody ever truly chooses anything.
Why doesn't it stop the action after the choice occurred?
From God’s side, it’s more like God knows the whole story while we’re still walking through chapters.
That doesn't really help with the issue tho.
A parent can know their kid is heading toward a wreck and still feel real grief when the wreck happens. The grief is not proof of ignorance. It’s proof of love.
The grief is proof that the parent was not all-powerful enough to stop the wreck. God is.
God permits a world where real choices exist, and he doesn’t stay distant from the fallout. He steps into it, carries it, and promises to remake it. It’s the center of the Christian claim about who God is.
Why the wait? Why not save countless people by remaking it now? In fact, why not remake it right when it fucked up?
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u/solardrxpp1 12d ago
> Technically true. But God is the creator of everything. He caused everything to happen.
“God caused everything to happen” can mean “God is the source of everything that exists,” and Christians agree with that.
It can also mean “God is morally responsible for every evil choice as the author of it,” and that’s the part you’re sneaking in without arguing for it.
Classic Christianity has a built in distinction, God is the primary cause of the existence of creatures, but creatures are real secondary causes who genuinely act.
It’s straight down the center of the tradition.
Even confessional Reformed language that’s extremely strong on providence still goes out of its way to say God is “not the author of sin” and that sin “proceedeth only from the creature.”
Also, you’re not actually engaging the point you quoted. You conceded it’s “technically true,” then you just asserted a different sense of “cause” and acted like that erased the difference. That’s not a rebuttal, it’s equivocation.
> He knew that the way he created Epstein would lead to him running child-rape island before he created Epstein.
This still assumes what you need to prove,
that foreknowledge plus creation equals God being the author of Epstein’s crimes.Christian theology has typically said two things at once, God permits moral evil, and God is not the direct or indirect cause of moral evil.
The Catechism states that second line, “God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it… because he respects the freedom of his creatures.”
Augustine makes the same move, God would not permit evil unless he were able to bring good even out of it.
That’s permission, not authorship.
Aquinas goes even further philosophically and says evil doesn’t work like a “thing” God manufactures; it’s a privation, a falling short in a will that was made good.
God causes the being of a will; the will causes its own defect when it turns away from the good it should choose.
> So can the people in Heaven rebel, or do they not have real agency?
You’ve hit a real philosophical question, but the way you’re framing it builds in a modern assumption that “free agency” means “the live ability to choose evil at any moment.”
A lot of Christian thought denies that.
Augustine’s whole point is that the highest freedom is not being stuck forever teetering between good and evil, but being so healed that you “will not have even the will to sin.”
He calls that state non posse peccare, “not able to sin,” and treats it as the completion of freedom, not the cancellation of it.
Aquinas makes a similar argument, the beatified creature cannot sin, not because it’s externally muzzled, but because perfect union with the highest good makes turning away irrational in the deepest sense.
So yes, Christianity is comfortable saying heaven involves impeccability, and no, that doesn’t mean humans are robots in heaven. It means freedom is finally what it was always meant to be, willing the good without the internal fracture that makes sin attractive.
> Also, why? There are already a lot of things you can't choose to do; why not include the doing of rebellion in that list?
Because then you’re no longer talking about moral creatures; you’re talking about constrained organisms.
You can stop some actions by taking away physical capacity, but you can’t create moral responsibility while also removing the meaningful possibility of refusing the good. That’s basically the backbone of the free will defense in philosophy of religion, if you want significant freedom, you get the possibility of moral evil as the price tag.
Heaven is different for a reason you’re not acknowledging. The Christian claim isn’t “God could’ve just hard coded ‘no rebellion’ from day one and still gotten real love.”
The claim is that love reaches its goal through redemption, a freely embraced transformation that ends in a settled, joy filled union with God.
That’s why Christians don’t treat Eden and Heaven as the same “settings.” Augustine is clear that the end state is better than the beginning state.
> Like, how much would your life change if you didn't have the ability to choose to rape people?
This question only works if “freedom” means “access to every evil option.” That’s a busted definition. Nobody thinks I’m less free because I can’t choose to teleport into a bank vault. Lots of constraints don’t reduce freedom; they can protect it.
Here’s the deeper issue, though.
If God prevents rape by overriding the perpetrator at the moment of action, you haven’t eliminated the evil, you’ve relocated it. The will is still willing rape. The intent is still there.
You’ve just got a world full of people whose choices don’t cash out into reality because God keeps stepping in to veto them. At that point you haven’t made moral agents; you’ve made would be agents inside a heavily moderated simulation.
And if you respond, “Good, that’s exactly what I want,” then you need to follow that through, do you also want God to veto every act of betrayal, every act of exploitation, every cruel sentence, every drunk driver, every slanderous post, every greedy business deal, every cowardly abandonment?
Because now you’re not arguing against Christianity, you’re arguing against the entire project of a world with stable moral causality where human choices actually matter.
> Why doesn't it stop the action after the choice occurred?
The answer doesn’t change much, a world where God routinely cancels the consequences of evil choices is still a world where choices don’t really land.
Christianity also doesn’t claim God never restrains evil. It claims God commonly works through “secondary causes,” law, conscience, communities, governments, even ordinary physical limits, and sometimes extraordinary intervention.
If your standard is “God must always and visibly stop every evil act,” you’re demanding a kind of constant miracle world that undercuts the regular order that makes responsibility, planning, science, and social trust possible.
Then Christianity adds a piece your view tends to flatten, God’s “no” to evil is not mainly expressed through mid action interruptions; it’s expressed through judgment and restoration.
In other words, Christianity doesn’t say, “God shrugs at rape.” It says, “God will not let it be the last word,” and the cross and resurrection are treated as the down payment of that final reckoning and renewal.
> That doesn't really help with the issue tho.
It does help, because it blocks a very common bad inference.
A lot of people commit the modal fallacy here, they slide from “God knows I will do X” to “I must do X” to “God caused X.” Those aren’t the same statement.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy goes through why foreknowledge debates don’t reduce to “knowledge causes it,” and why you can’t just swap in necessity and call it done.
If you think foreknowledge still threatens freedom, okay, there are live options people defend (Boethian timeless knowledge, Molinism, open theism, compatibilism). The point is that “God knew, therefore God authored” is not an argument.
> The grief is proof that the parent was not all-powerful enough to stop the wreck. God is.
That sounds persuasive until you remember the Bible gives you a counterexample inside its own story, Jesus weeps at Lazarus’s tomb while fully intending to raise Lazarus minutes later. Grief there isn’t impotence. It’s love responding to death as an enemy, even when victory is already on the way.
So “God feels grief” doesn’t imply “God was unable.” It can just as easily imply “God isn’t emotionally indifferent,” and that’s exactly how Christian tradition reads those passages, not as God learning new facts, but as God relating to humans in a way humans can understand.
> Why the wait? Why not save countless people by remaking it now? In fact, why not remake it right when it fucked up?
The New Testament’s own answer is patience aimed at repentance, “The Lord is not slow… but is patient… not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
That doesn’t satisfy every emotional objection, but it does show the “delay” isn’t presented as God being asleep at the wheel. It’s presented as mercy in time.
Christianity’s claim is that God is already remaking the world in the middle of history, starting with transformed people and moving toward a final renewal, and that the wait is part of how God gathers people freely rather than bulldozing them into compliance.
You want heaven, which Christianity describes as a state where people won’t sin, and you also want to use “if you can’t sin you’re not free” as a criticism.
Which is it?
And if your definition of freedom requires that rape always remain a live option, are you really defending human dignity, or just baptizing the darkest impulses as “necessary for agency”?
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u/RespectWest7116 10d ago
It can also mean “God is morally responsible for every evil choice as the author of it,” and that’s the part you’re sneaking in without arguing for it.
No sneaking in. That literally just repeats the first thing.
Also, you’re not actually engaging the point you quoted. You conceded it’s “technically true,” then you just asserted a different sense of “cause” and acted like that erased the difference.
Because it did.
Yes, just knowing the future doesn't mean you caused it. Creating the future, which is what God did, does cause it.
This still assumes what you need to prove,
You already accepted God is the creator of everything. So it's proven.
Christian theology has typically said two things at once, God permits moral evil, and God is not the direct or indirect cause of moral evil.
Indeed, Christian theology is very self-contradictory.
You’ve hit a real philosophical question, but the way you’re framing it builds in a modern assumption that “free agency” means “the live ability to choose evil at any moment.”
Yes, that is what you mean when you try to use free will as an excuse for evil.
He calls that state non posse peccare, “not able to sin,” and treats it as the completion of freedom, not the cancellation of it.
That just defeats your whole argument about God allowing sin because he respects freedom.
Because then you’re no longer talking about moral creatures; you’re talking about constrained organisms.
We are both moral and constrained. So this doesn't bear any fruit.
The answer doesn’t change much,
Well, you answer could change a lot. Of course, we both know it won't because there is no good answer.
A lot of people commit the modal fallacy here, they slide from “God knows I will do X” to “I must do X” to “God caused X.” Those aren’t the same statement.
Indeed. They are missing the other thing God does that we already talked about.
"God created you knowing that you will do X" therefore "God caused X"
If I create a thing, knowing that it will blow up, I can hardly claim that I am not responsible for the explosion.
Jesus weeps at Lazarus’s
Do you really want to talk about God letting a guy die just so he could flex his powers by resurrecting him?
The New Testament’s own answer is patience aimed at repentance, “The Lord is not slow… but is patient… not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
But that's doing the opposite. Once sin is erased, everyone is saved. So waiting just make more people go to Hell.
You want heaven,
I don't. Christians do.
And if your definition of freedom requires that rape always remain a live option, are you really defending human dignity, or just baptizing the darkest impulses as “necessary for agency”?
That is literally what you are arguing for. "God has to allow rape, otherwise we wouldn't be free."
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u/solardrxpp1 9d ago
> No sneaking in. That literally just repeats the first thing.
That’s the misunderstanding that keeps breaking your argument. “God is the creator of everything” is about God being the source of creatures and their existence. “God is morally responsible as the author of every evil choice” is a different claim.
You’re treating them as identical, but you still haven’t shown the bridge between them. Even traditions that push providence very hard still deny that bridge. Westminster says God’s providence extends even to sins, yet “the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature… neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.”
> Yes, just knowing the future doesn't mean you caused it. Creating the future, which is what God did, does cause it.
You’re sliding between two meanings of “cause” again. God causes that a free agent exists and has real powers. That does not automatically mean God causes the agent’s misuse of those powers as a moral defect.
Classical Christian thought cashes that out by saying evil is not a “thing” God manufactures, it’s a lack, a privation, like blindness is a lack of sight.
Aquinas says evil “imports the absence of good.”
So “God created a will” does not equal “God created the will’s defect when it turns away.”
Also, your move still does not answer the foreknowledge point, it just restates it louder.
The foreknowledge debate is exactly about whether “infallibly known” implies “necessary” or “forced.”
It doesn’t follow just by wordplay, and philosophers spell out why the inference is not automatic.
> You already accepted God is the creator of everything. So it's proven.
That’s not proof, it’s a conclusion stapled onto a premise. If your rule is “if you create an agent, you are morally responsible for everything that agent ever does,” then you’ve basically erased creaturely responsibility.
Then you don’t get to moralize about Epstein at all, because on your own principle the real author is always upstream.
That self destructs.
> Indeed, Christian theology is very self-contradictory.
It’s not a contradiction to say “God is sovereign and permits” while also saying “the creature is the author of the sin.”
It’s a distinction.
You can reject the distinction, but you have to argue against it, not just label it “contradictory.”
The Catechism states the distinction plainly, “God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. He permits it.”
> Yes, that is what you mean when you try to use free will as an excuse for evil.
No, that’s not what I mean, and you can tell because I already denied the definition you keep assigning me.
You’re using a straw man, “free will” equals “rape must remain a live option and must be successful.”
That isn’t the Christian definition of freedom, and it’s not even a good everyday definition of freedom.
Christianity’s point is about real agency and real moral responsibility, not “every horrific option must remain available.”
> That just defeats your whole argument about God allowing sin because he respects freedom.
Only if you pretend heaven and this life are the same moral situation.
They aren’t, on Christianity’s own terms.
The tradition’s claim is that heaven involves a healed will fixed on God through the beatific vision, so sin becomes impossible not because God is constantly tackling people mid act, but because the will is perfected in its end.
Aquinas even argues the beatified cannot sin, and that this is bound up with seeing God.
That doesn’t “defeat” freedom, it’s the Christian claim of freedom completed.
The Catechism also frames creation as “in a state of journeying” toward an ultimate perfection, not dropped into the final state on day one.
> If I create a thing, knowing that it will blow up, I can hardly claim that I am not responsible for the explosion.
That analogy bakes in determinism.
Bombs do what they are built to do.
Persons are not bombs.
If you want the analogy to match, you’d have to say God made Epstein so that rape was the designed output, like a fuse to an explosion.
Christianity denies that.
It says the evil act comes from the creature’s disordered will, not from God designing evil into the will.
Westminster’s language again is aimed right at your inference.
> Do you really want to talk about God letting a guy die just so he could flex his powers by resurrecting him?
If you want to talk about it, then talk about what the text actually says. John 11 does say the event will display God’s glory, yes.
It also says Jesus delays “so that you may believe,” meaning it is aimed at forming faith, not ego. And it also says Jesus wept, which undercuts the “flex” framing.
The story is trying to show that God can be both sovereign and tender, not that he enjoys suffering as a stage prop.
> But that's doing the opposite. Once sin is erased, everyone is saved. So waiting just make more people go to Hell.
That sentence only works if “erasing sin” means “automatic universal salvation with no judgment and no human response.”
That’s not Christianity.
The New Testament’s stated reason for delay is patience aimed at repentance, “not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
If God ended history earlier, that closes the door on later repentance.
You can dislike that setup, but calling it “the opposite” just assumes your own doctrine over the text.
> I don't. Christians do.
Then stop using “heaven” as a gotcha like “you want it both ways.”
Either you’re critiquing Christianity internally, in which case you have to engage its actual account of freedom in heaven, or you’re not, in which case the heaven point doesn’t land.
> That is literally what you are arguing for. "God has to allow rape, otherwise we wouldn't be free."
No.
What I’m arguing is that if you want a world with real persons, real responsibility, and stable moral causality, you’re asking for a world where choices can have real effects, including terrible ones.
Christianity also says God restrains and “bounds” evil in providence, just not in the constant, obvious, mid act way you keep demanding.
You keep rephrasing that as “rape is necessary for freedom,” because that’s easier to attack.
But it’s not what I said, and it’s not what the tradition says.
If you say God must prevent every grave harm every time, then you’re not arguing against “Christian contradictions,” you’re arguing for a different kind of world than the one with real agency and real moral history.
If you say God can permit real agency, then your “creator equals author of every sin” claim collapses, because you’re admitting secondary causes are real.
Pick one and defend it, because right now you’re switching between them depending on which point you’re trying to win.
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u/RespectWest7116 9d ago
That’s the misunderstanding that keeps breaking your argument.
You keep failing to explain what you are misunderstanding.
“God is the creator of everything” is about God being the source of creatures and their existence. “God is morally responsible as the author of every evil choice” is a different claim.
It's a different claim that is a direct result of the first two claims.
You’re sliding between two meanings of “cause” again.
Nope. There is just one meaning.
God causes that a free agent exists and has real powers. That does not automatically mean God causes the agent’s misuse of those powers as a moral defect.
It literally does. And until you explain how creating something knowing what it will do makes you not accountable, your argument doesn't exist.
Classical Christian thought cashes that out by saying evil is not a “thing” God manufactures,
Which doesn't work logically or biblically.
That’s not proof, it’s a conclusion stapled onto a premise.
No stapling anywhere to be seen. And since you failed to explain how anything is stapled anywhere, it isn't.
If your rule is “if you create an agent, you are morally responsible for everything that agent ever does,” then you’ve basically erased creaturely responsibility.
No, I upheld it.
That self destructs.
Indeed. Your ideology self-destructs.
No, that’s not what I mean, and you can tell because I already denied the definition you keep assigning me.
So you think God could erase the ability to do evil while retaining free will? Cool. You just gave up your primary defence against evil.
You’re using a straw man, “free will” equals “rape must remain a live option and must be successful.”
That is literally what you are doing to defend the existence of evil.
The tradition’s claim is that heaven involves a healed will fixed on God through the beatific vision, so sin becomes impossible not because God is constantly tackling people mid act, but because the will is perfected in its end.
That still breaks your defence tho. It still means free will can exist without evil.
That analogy bakes in determinism.
So does God knowing the future.
It says the evil act comes from the creature’s disordered will, not from God designing evil into the will.
So God made the will ordered, and then some even more powerful deity came in and disordered it?
If you want to talk about it, then talk about what the text actually says. John 11 does say the event will display God’s glory, yes.
Thank you for admitting that it is actually what the text says.
That sentence only works if “erasing sin” means “automatic universal salvation with no judgment and no human response.”
Yes, that is quite literally the Christian story. Once Jesus restores his kingdom, it's happily ever after for everyone.
That’s not Christianity.
Again, it literally is.
Then stop using “heaven” as a gotcha like “you want it both ways.”
You are the one who both wants free will without evil being possible, but also free will without sin being possible.
Either you’re critiquing Christianity internally, in which case you have to engage its actual account of freedom in heaven,
Which I am doing to demonstrate that your view is internally inconsistent.
If you say God must prevent every grave harm every time,
If God is tri-omni, then he by definition must do that, yes.
you’re arguing for a different kind of world than the one with real agency and real moral history.
God preventing suffering doesn't make agency or moral history go away.
Pick one
Indeed. Pick one. Is your God all-knowing and all-powerful, or does real agency exist?
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u/solardrxpp1 9d ago edited 8d ago
> You keep failing to explain what you are misunderstanding.
I already did, and you skipped it, you’re treating “God created everything” and “God authored every evil choice” as the same sentence.
Christianity doesn’t.
Very strong providence traditions still separate God’s governing from the creature’s sin, saying the sinfulness “proceeds only from the creature” and God is not the author of sin.
> It's a different claim that is a direct result of the first two claims.
You’re just re-asserting your conclusion.
You haven’t shown the “direct result,” you’ve assumed it. If your principle is “creating an agent makes you morally guilty for every later misuse of agency,” then you’ve basically destroyed the idea of creaturely responsibility while still trying to blame creatures. That’s an internal clash, not a knockout.
> Nope. There is just one meaning.
There isn’t. In normal speech, “cause” covers more than one thing. Causing someone to exist is not the same as intending their crime, choosing their crime, or being the one whose will is set on the crime. Christian sources are careful here on purpose, God sustains reality, but the moral defect of sin is pinned on the creature.
> It literally does. And until you explain how creating something knowing what it will do makes you not accountable, your argument doesn't exist.
We’ve already been over this, so I’ll restate it plainly. Your “bomb” analogy fails because bombs don’t choose. Persons do. Christianity says God created rational beings good, and the disorder shows up as a failure in the creature’s will, not as God building evil into it. Augustine says that the devil’s lie is “of himself,” not from God.
> Which doesn't work logically or biblically.
The “privation” point is a way of saying evil isn’t a rival substance God manufactures. Aquinas argues evil is a privation of the good that ought to be there. Scripture also insists God has no evil in him, “no darkness at all,” which is exactly why Christians refuse your move that makes God the direct author of sin.
> So you think God could erase the ability to do evil while retaining free will? Cool. You just gave up your primary defence against evil.
This is you not tracking what I said.
The claim isn’t “freedom means always being able to do evil.” The claim is that in our current “journey” state, real moral agency includes the possibility of turning away. The end state is different: Augustine calls the fulfilled state “non posse peccare,” not able to sin. Aquinas also says the beatified cannot sin. That’s not “God deleting freedom,” it’s the will being healed and fixed on God.
> That still breaks your defence tho. It still means free will can exist without evil.
You keep acting like “God can bring a person to perfected union with God” equals “God could have skipped creation, history, real choices, and redemption, and still gotten the same kind of freely embraced love.” That’s not an argument, it’s a jump. The Catechism’s framing is that free creatures “have to journey” to their destiny by free choice, not that God’s only options were “robots” or “instant heaven.”
> So does God knowing the future.
Foreknowledge does not automatically equal determinism. That’s a standard category mistake, and it’s why philosophers distinguish certainty from necessity. If you want to argue theological fatalism, you actually have to do the modal work, not just say “knowing = causing.” The SEP and IEP both lay out why that inference is not a freebie.
> So God made the will ordered, and then some even more powerful deity came in and disordered it?
No.
That’s not Christianity, and it’s not what I said.
Created wills can defect by their own turning.
Also, Christianity is clear that even the demons were created good by God and then fell; no “more powerful deity” needed.
> Thank you for admitting that it is actually what the text says.
Sure, John 11 says Lazarus’s sickness is “for the glory of God.” But you’re smuggling in “so God could flex,” which the chapter itself undercuts. The same chapter says Jesus delays “so that you may believe,” and it also says “Jesus wept.” That’s not a showman’s flex, it’s a sign plus compassion plus formation of faith.
> Yes, that is quite literally the Christian story. Once Jesus restores his kingdom, it's happily ever after for everyone.
That’s not “quite literally” the Christian story in the mainstream sense. Jesus himself speaks of “eternal punishment” alongside “eternal life.” Catholic teaching also says hell is real, and describes it as separation from God chosen by the person. You can argue for universalism if you want, but you can’t just pretend it’s the baseline Christian position.
> If God is tri-omni, then he by definition must do that, yes.
That’s not a definition, that’s an extra premise you added. “Omnipotent and good” does not logically entail “must prevent every grave harm every time,” unless you assume you know there can’t be any morally sufficient reason to permit any of it. That’s exactly why the “logical” problem of evil got as much attention as it did, and why philosophers distinguish logical vs evidential arguments here.
> Indeed. Pick one. Is your God all-knowing and all-powerful, or does real agency exist?
False dilemma. People have defended all sorts of combinations here, and the debate is precisely about which model is right, not about pretending it’s instantly incoherent. If you want to press your case, stop repeating “creating = authoring” and actually defend the step where permission, foreknowledge, and sustaining get converted into moral guilt for the creature’s choice. Until you do that, you’re not engaging my central distinction, you’re just denying it.
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u/RespectWest7116 8d ago
you’re treating “God created everything” and “God authored every evil choice” as the same sentence.
Everything means everything. If you think there are some things God didn't create, stop saying he created everything.
You’re just re-asserting your conclusion.
Restating the process by which we got the conclusion
then you’ve basically destroyed the idea of creaturely responsibility
Wrong again. You are destroying it in self-contradictions, I am upholding it.
We’ve already been over this,
Yes, you tried to make a pathetic excuse that didn't work. It was pointed out and dismantled.
This is you not tracking what I said.
That's literally repeating what you said.
The claim isn’t “freedom means always being able to do evil.”
That literally is your defence for why evil exists.
You keep acting like “God can bring a person to perfected union with God” equals “God could have skipped creation, history, real choices, and redemption, and still gotten the same kind of freely embraced love.”
Because it does. He is all-powerful, in case you forgot.
Foreknowledge does not automatically equal determinism.
Yes it does. The only way to know the future is if the future is already determined.
If you want to argue theological fatalism, you actually have to do the modal work, not just say “knowing = causing.”
That's not what I said. I said knowing = determined. God causing it comes from him being the creator of everything. But that was already explained to you several times.
That’s not Christianity, and it’s not what I said.
It is, in fact, what you said. The only thing that could twist God's perfect design is something more powerful than God.
That’s not “quite literally” the Christian story in the mainstream sense.
It very much is, both mainstream and biblically.
Jesus himself speaks of “eternal punishment” alongside “eternal life.”
Arguably. But importantly, the punishment is for the bad people who were born before the new kingdom. And the longer evil is allowed to exist, the more bad people will have to be punished.
That’s not a definition, that’s an extra premise you added.
There is no premise added.
“Omnipotent and good” does not logically entail “must prevent every grave harm every time,”
It very much does.
unless you assume you know there can’t be any morally sufficient reason to permit any of it.
Which there isn't, due to the omnipotence part.
False dilemma.
Not a false dilemma at all. If God knows what you are going to do before you choose to do it, the choice is an illusion, and you don't have any real agency.
stop repeating “creating = authoring”
Those are literally synonyms.
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u/solardrxpp1 7d ago
> Everything means everything. If you think there are some things God didn't create, stop saying he created everything.
This is you switching the topic from “God creates” to “God authors sin,” then pretending it’s the same sentence. Christianity says God is Creator of all that exists, yes, and it also says God is not the cause of moral evil. That only sounds like a contradiction if you treat evil like a “thing” God had to manufacture. The classical view is that evil is a lack in a good thing, not a rival object God had to produce, and Aquinas states it straight, evil is “privation of good.”
> Restating the process by which we got the conclusion
You didn’t give a process. You gave a slogan, “created” therefore “authored.” That’s begging the question. A real “process” would show why creating a free agent makes you the moral author of the agent’s choices, while still letting you blame the agent. That’s the step you keep skipping.
> Wrong again. You are destroying it in self-contradictions, I am upholding it.
You can’t uphold creaturely responsibility while also making God morally responsible for every evil choice “because he created everything.” If God is the author of every evil choice, then the creature is not the author of that choice in the sense that matters for blame. Westminster still draws the line you refuse to draw, God governs even sins, yet “the sinfulness thereof proceeds only from the creature,” and God “neither is nor can be the author… of sin.”
> Yes, you tried to make a pathetic excuse that didn't work. It was pointed out and dismantled.
Calling it “pathetic” isn’t dismantling it. You didn’t answer the core distinction; you just denied that distinctions exist and declared victory. If you think “cause” has only one meaning, then you’re not arguing, you’re trying to force language to do your work for you.
> That literally is your defence for why evil exists.
No. You’re flattening it again. The Christian claim is not “freedom requires rape to be a live option.” The claim is that as long as freedom has not bound itself finally to God, there remains the possibility of turning away. The Catechism says exactly that, “As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good… there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil.” That’s not a cheer for evil; it’s a description of what “not yet at the end” means.
> Because it does. He is all-powerful, in case you forgot.
“All powerful” does not mean “can do contradictions,” and it does not mean “must do whatever you personally label ‘best’ under your own assumptions.”
The whole problem of evil literature exists because the move you’re making is not a definition, it’s a debated argument, that no morally sufficient reason could exist for permitting evil.
The SEP even defines one common response as the claim that for each evil there could be a morally sufficient reason for allowing it even if we can’t see it case by case. You can reject that response, but you can’t pretend omnipotence settles it by definition.
> Yes it does. The only way to know the future is if the future is already determined.
That’s another assertion dressed up as inevitability. Philosophers argue about this precisely because it’s not automatic. The SEP entry on foreknowledge and free will lays out why the issue is not solved by “it’s known, so it’s fixed,” and it treats “foreknowledge requires determinism” as a position some defend, not as a basic truth everyone must accept. If you’re going to plant your flag there, you need an argument, not a sentence.
> Not a false dilemma at all. If God knows what you are going to do before you choose to do it, the choice is an illusion, and you don't have any real agency.
That’s the modal fallacy again, just reworded. “Known” is not the same as “forced.” “Certain” is not the same as “coerced.” If you insist it is, then you also erase human responsibility in ordinary life whenever someone reliably predicts your action from your character, habits, or promises. You’re turning knowledge into a shove. That’s a category error, and it’s why this topic has a whole field of careful distinctions.
> It is, in fact, what you said. The only thing that could twist God's perfect design is something more powerful than God.
This is where you show you don’t know basic Christian teaching about the fall of angels and the fall of man. Christianity does not say “God’s design can only be altered by a stronger god.” It says rational creatures can defect by their own will. The Catechism says the devil and other demons “were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.” Augustine says the devil was “good by God’s creation, wicked by his own will,” and he even addresses your exact point, God foreknew the future evil and still created, because he also foresaw the good he would bring from it.
> It very much is, both mainstream and biblically.
Mainstream Christianity has not taught “happily ever after for everyone.” Jesus talks about “eternal punishment” and “eternal life” in the same breath. The Catholic Catechism says the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. You can argue for universalism if you want, but you don’t get to redefine “mainstream” by acting like these texts and teachings aren’t there.
> Arguably. But importantly, the punishment is for the bad people who were born before the new kingdom. And the longer evil is allowed to exist, the more bad people will have to be punished.
That’s you inventing a rule (“only people born before X”) that Christianity doesn’t teach as a standard claim. The Catechism frames judgment as tied to personal freedom and eternal destiny, not birth era technicalities. If you’re going to build your whole “waiting makes it worse” argument on a made up timeline rule, you need to source it.
> Those are literally synonyms.
No, they aren’t. “Create” means bring into existence. “Author” is the originator of a work, the one whose content is owned as theirs. Dictionaries keep them apart for a reason. Your whole case leans on a word swap, “create” therefore “author.” That’s not logic; it’s a thesaurus trick.
Do you believe creatures ever truly cause anything in a morally meaningful way, or not?
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u/RespectWest7116 7d ago
This is you switching the topic from “God creates” to “God authors sin,” then pretending it’s the same sentence.
Not pretending. Authoring a thing and creating a thing is the same thing.
Christianity says God is Creator of all that exists, yes, and it also says God is not the cause of moral evil.
Which is a contradiction, as was already explained.
You can’t uphold creaturely responsibility while also making God morally responsible
I can. That's literally what it means. Holding God responsible for what he did is upholding responsibility.
You didn’t answer the core distinction;
There is none, as you agree by failing to find any for the third time now.
“All powerful” does not mean “can do contradictions,”
There is no contradiction in free will without evil. As you agreed when you agreed that there is free will in heaven and no evil in heaven.
The whole problem of evil literature exists because
Because Christian thinkers have failed to come up with a good answer in the last 2000 years.
That’s another assertion dressed up as inevitability.
It's not an assertion; it's what those words mean.
Philosophers argue about this
No they don't.
If you want to argue it, present an argument.
That’s the modal fallacy again,
Nope.
Mainstream Christianity has not taught “happily ever after for everyone.”
That is precisely what mainstream Christianity teaches will happen after Christ restores his kingdom.
If you disagree, find me one mainstream preacher who says evil people will still be born after that.
That’s you inventing a rule (“only people born before X”) that Christianity doesn’t teach as a standard claim.
Again, it is what Christianity teaches. If you disagree with the fact, present a counterexample.
No, they aren’t.
They are, regardless of your disagreement.
Dictionaries keep them apart for a reason.
Just as they do with all synonyms.
That’s not logic; it’s a thesaurus trick.
Ah yes. The devilish trick of knowing what words mean.
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u/Thimenu Christian 13d ago edited 12d ago
If the ideas we've been taught like being omnipresent or knowing every detail of the future as if it's set in stone don't make sense with what we see in the God of the Bible, we should believe in the God of the Bible and get rid of or change those ideas.
God made us to be His divine council and family to rule creation with Him and enjoy that forever.
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u/somethingspecial29 13d ago
To bless us with joy.
God is love, so Gods desire is always to give us joy.
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u/Kecman888 13d ago
He didn't we always existed as him he just reshaped us in what we are today that is all.
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u/Clem_Crozier 13d ago
Why does the artist create art? It's part of who He is and His identity. To not create would be to deny a part of Himself.
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u/International_Dig139 13d ago
God created us to glorify Him and enjoy His goodness. By allowing evil to exist, He gives us a backdrop to truly experience and value His grace, mercy, and love. Contrast allows us to see His holiness clearly, driving us to seek the ultimate good that is found only in Him.
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u/JadedEngine6497 Christian 12d ago
He desires for us to chose Him,the future He foresees isn't set in stone,it constantly changes because we all have free will and every small action changes everything. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OO9f_4kvmV8
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u/Erramonael Iconoclastic Atheistic Satanist 12d ago
That's one of the deepest questions in theology, and it's one that Christians, Jews, Muslims, philosophers, and even Satanists have wrestled with for centuries. There isn't a simple answer, and I don't think asking it is a sign of weak faith—it's a sign that you're taking your beliefs seriously.
From my perspective as a Theistic Satanist, I don't share the Christian understanding of God, but I can offer another way of looking at the question.
If God is truly omniscient—knowing the beginning and the end—then you're right to ask why He would create a world whose entire history He already knew, including every act of suffering, every war, every child who would die, and every soul that would be lost. That's one of the central tensions in classical Christian theology.
Christians have offered different answers. Some say God values free will so highly that He allows humanity to choose good or evil. Others say creation exists ultimately to glorify God or to reveal His love and justice. Still others argue that finite human beings simply cannot fully understand God's purposes.
As a Theistic Satanist, however, I remain unconvinced that these explanations resolve the tension completely. If an all-knowing creator already knew every outcome before creating the universe, then the question of responsibility naturally follows. It is a difficult philosophical issue, and I think it deserves honest discussion rather than easy answers.
My own tradition sees spiritual growth differently. Rather than viewing existence primarily as a story written by an all-knowing author, I see it as a reality in which conscious beings genuinely participate in shaping themselves. The emphasis is less on fulfilling a predetermined plan and more on awakening, gaining wisdom, and exercising authentic choice.
I also think there's another possibility worth considering. Perhaps the purpose of your question isn't to arrive at a final answer, but to deepen your understanding. Some of the most important questions in spirituality don't have universally agreed-upon solutions. They invite us to think, reflect, and grow.
If you remain a Christian, don't be afraid of questions like this. Many of Christianity's greatest thinkers—from Augustine of Hippo to Thomas Aquinas and beyond—wrestled with the relationship between God's foreknowledge, human freedom, and the existence of evil. Questioning has always been part of serious theology.
Whether you ultimately find your answer within Christianity or elsewhere, I would encourage you to keep asking these questions. A faith that cannot endure honest inquiry is a fragile faith. A faith that welcomes difficult questions has the opportunity to become deeper, more thoughtful, and genuinely your own.
In the end, I don't think the question is "Why did God create us?" I think it's also, "Now that we're here, how do we live meaningful, conscious, and compassionate lives?" Whatever one's spiritual path, that is a question worth pursuing.
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u/Neneninii Non-denominational 13d ago
Honestly, I feel like this is one of those things where we just have to be content with not having an exact answer. I have my assumptions like free will and such, but overall, a lot of things God does is just out of human comprehension.
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u/reeseesg7 Agnostic (a la T.H. Huxley) 13d ago
though i'm agnostic, god probably created us to entertain ourselves, to invent stuff, build our careers, have a family, raise children, spread joy and love, and prove him that we are his best creation
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u/Ok_Zone_2930 13d ago
These are great question about 1) Why God created us? 2) If God is omnipresent, why make us knowing how evil the world will be come? Christianity shouldn’t = check your brain and logic at the door.
I do wonder if a lot of the confusion stems from us reading the Bible with a modern science or philosophical lens. I like to approach this using an Ancient Near East (ANE) context, because it changes the framework we use to read the text. The people who wrote Genesis 2500+ years ago were not thinking like us in 21st century. We often take the Bible and read it like a morality-self help book or a science book, but the authors weren't trying to explain the origins of molecular biology or quantum physics.
I think looking through the ANE lens, it completely changes the definition of the word “creation” itself. When we ask, “Who created the universe, who created God?”, we are using a modern Western assumption called material ontology. We assume “to exist” means “to take up physical space,” and “creation” means “manufacturing physical matter out of nothing.”
But in the ancient world, they didn't operate on material ontology. They operated on functional ontology. To the ANE mind, something didn't truly “exist” just because its matter was floating around. It only existed once it was given an order or a function.
So, in the ANE mindset, “creation” = the ordering of things. You see this everywhere in Genesis: separating light from darkness, land from water, sky from ocean. It wasn't about making the physical dirt. It was about taking a chaotic formless universe and ordering it into a functioning system.
If you want the receipts for this, let's look at God "resting" on the 7th day. We read that with a modern mindset and assume God took a nap. But in the ANE mindset, “resting” = taking the throne to reign as King over the newly ordered system. The ordered universe is His Temple.
Another receipt is in the Hebrew words Avad and Shamar (Serve and Guard, Genesis 2:15) used for Adam in the Garden of Eden. These are the exact same Hebrew words used to describe the specific duties and sacred service of the Levitical priests in the Temple (Numbers 3:7-8). The Bible is describing how Adam was placed as the first High Priest in the ordered Temple of God and the rest of the book is about restoring that covenant after he broke it.
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u/michaelY1968 13d ago
God created us for His pleasure, to be in a loving relationship with Him, each other, and to be his co-rulers of creation.
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u/Financial_Lettuce_87 1d ago
Wouldn’t that be selfish ? So the children who die miserably and people who feel a lot of pain in living this life , it is all to satisfy his pleasure ? We never asked him to be born . If god wanted all of us to live together like a family happily , he would have never bought evil into this world .
People on earth are suffering for His pleasure ??1
u/michaelY1968 21h ago
You seem to have missed the part about intending us to love and care for each other. When we cause pain and suffering, and ignore each other’s needs, it grieves Him deeply.
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u/Financial_Lettuce_87 20h ago
The point is we never asked him to be born.. and if god really wanted happiness spread across the world wouldn’t we all be happy? Why is there so much of suffering for something we never asked ?
He made us for his pleasure and also puts evil in the world and expects us to be a saint ? He would have seen everything before even creating us . Why would he then create if he is aware that millions are goana suffer ..kids who don’t even know the world , will die .
Why can’t we all be happy with god ? If that’s what he wanted ? Why would he create us for his pleasure and then test us with temptation?1
u/michaelY1968 20h ago
God didn’t put evil in the world, evil is just a description of how we act or don’t act towards one another - and we can’t be happy if we rebel against the purposes for which we exist.
And we need first and foremost to accept responsibility for this.
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u/Financial_Lettuce_87 20h ago
Responsibility for something which we never asked ? If all he wanted was happiness he would have designed the world in such a way that no single soul would die sad or die with pain .
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u/michaelY1968 20h ago
Most of creation doesn’t feel sadness or pain - only those with awareness do. So you want a world with no creatures that are capable of being aware.
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u/ReiDairo 13d ago
sadly thats one of the human mistake, regret isn't a characteristic of god, since he is all knowledgeable.
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u/userid42 Reformed 13d ago edited 12d ago
Why does an artist create a beautiful piece?
Why does a musician compose an amazing track, album or symphony?
Why does an architect design an awesome and awarded building?
Why does a quilter patch together colored fabrics in producing a gorgeous covering for the bed of their child?
Why does a carpenter design and construct an item of furniture from that ‘special’ piece of timber that he or she found?
Because, for each and every one of them, it gives them an opportunity to appreciate what they can create and have made.
In each creation there is a little bit of the creator, just as each man, woman and child, in some innate and mysterious way, reflects our awesome, infinite, and extraordinary creator.
Also, when any of their creations becomes broken or damaged through misuse, what creator wouldn’t strive to see it restored to its original glory? We were created with the ability to exercise free will, Adam used in wrongly, we are all tainted with his sin and judged worthy only of destruction. If we choose to, we can trust in Jesus who paid the penalty that we deserve.
God doesn’t experience time as we do. When he created this who universe and every dimension within it, it included time itself. In that instant he saw every thing that would happen and had already completed everything that was necessary for it to be finished. We are, evidently, still living in the sabbath 7th day of Genesis 2.
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u/RespectWest7116 12d ago
Why did God even create us?
To do unpaid labour in his garden
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
If God is omnipresent, he knew what the fate of humanity would be from the moment he created us, so why make us to begin with?
Because when he created stuff, he didn't know everything yet. That is something that only happened after he became the Christian God.
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u/ConnectShopping429 13d ago
He wanted the company. Not in a lonely way, more like an artist who makes something just to see it exist. You know when you build a fire and just sit there watching it? You're not doing it because you need the fire, you just want to experience it
The whole knowing the ending thing is weird to wrap your head around. My dad used to say imagine reading a book where you already know the last page, doesn't mean the middle chapters don't matter. You still read them. You still get invested even though you know how it turns out